Surreal, dreamlike, lyrical, macabre words you may have seen used to describe this slice of Gothic Euro-horror from prolific Spanish director Jess Franco.
Having just watched the 'uncut and uncensored' DVD of Virgin Among The Living Dead, I would personally use words such as boring, stupefying, incomprehensible and pretentious to convey my feelings about this dreadful film.
Jess Franco's employs his usual 'stylish' flourishes (ie. awful zooms, extreme close-ups, bad editing) and throws in a fair amount of nudity, to tell the tale of Christina (played by the gorgeous Christina Von Blanc) who travels to her ancestral home to attend the reading of a will. There she meets the other members of her family for the first time a group of weirdos and lunatics who spend the rest of the film stripping off, drinking blood and generally acting freaky.
Christina witnesses many bizarre events during her stay and is eventually found delirious, wandering in the woods, and is taken to the hotel where she stayed the night before. Here, she is seen reaching out to a woman, who leads her into a lake where she disappears under the surface. Is this a dream? Reality? Is she actually dead? Do we really care? By the end of the film, I was struggling to keep myself awake. As I was reaching for the 'stop' button, lo and behold, a whole slew of 'bonus scenes' popped up on my screen, featuring some of the worst zombies in cinematic history (apparently the work of French horror auteur Jean Rollin nice job, Jean!).
Now I don't want to sound like a philistine after all, there are plenty of people out there who laud this as a classic but 'Virgin Among The Living Dead' really stands out as a low point in my horror-viewing history. Bar the naked chicks and one groovy scene featuring a man floating backwards with a rope around his neck, I really found this 'classic' to be a chore to watch. You have been warned.
Having just watched the 'uncut and uncensored' DVD of Virgin Among The Living Dead, I would personally use words such as boring, stupefying, incomprehensible and pretentious to convey my feelings about this dreadful film.
Jess Franco's employs his usual 'stylish' flourishes (ie. awful zooms, extreme close-ups, bad editing) and throws in a fair amount of nudity, to tell the tale of Christina (played by the gorgeous Christina Von Blanc) who travels to her ancestral home to attend the reading of a will. There she meets the other members of her family for the first time a group of weirdos and lunatics who spend the rest of the film stripping off, drinking blood and generally acting freaky.
Christina witnesses many bizarre events during her stay and is eventually found delirious, wandering in the woods, and is taken to the hotel where she stayed the night before. Here, she is seen reaching out to a woman, who leads her into a lake where she disappears under the surface. Is this a dream? Reality? Is she actually dead? Do we really care? By the end of the film, I was struggling to keep myself awake. As I was reaching for the 'stop' button, lo and behold, a whole slew of 'bonus scenes' popped up on my screen, featuring some of the worst zombies in cinematic history (apparently the work of French horror auteur Jean Rollin nice job, Jean!).
Now I don't want to sound like a philistine after all, there are plenty of people out there who laud this as a classic but 'Virgin Among The Living Dead' really stands out as a low point in my horror-viewing history. Bar the naked chicks and one groovy scene featuring a man floating backwards with a rope around his neck, I really found this 'classic' to be a chore to watch. You have been warned.